Telephone owners who are away from their base home or business telephone currently have several alternatives to determine whether calling parties have called the base phone, and to retrieve calling information such as the calling parties' telephone numbers. One such system is a telephone answering machine, in which a calling party can leave a recorded message. Some of the machines have a feature in which the telephone owner who is away from his base phone, can call in to his answering machine and hear the recorded messages by inputting a special code. However, if a calling party is in an emergency situation, and urgently needs to get in touch with the owner, (as for example, if the owner is a physician) then he or she won't be able to do so immediately but instead must wait for the owner to periodically call in to his answering machine.
Other systems employ digital pagers, in which the calling party acquires the number of the owner's pager, and then calls the pager number and enters the calling party's telephone number. The disadvantage of these systems is that the caller may need to place a call to the owner's base phone, and listen to a message reciting the number for the pager. He would then have to either memorize the pager number or write it down, place a call to the pager, enter his or her own telephone number receiving no verification that the number was entered correctly. This process is difficult and time consuming for a person in an emergency situation.
Another prior art system involves the use of voice pagers, in which a calling party may leave a voice message with the owner of the pager who is receiving the message. The disadvantage of this system is that the voice quality of the orally delivered message is very poor. Moreover, if the pager owner doesn't comprehend the message the first time it is transmitted, then he must wait until the calling party decides to try calling the pager again. There is also no verification to the calling party that he or she entered the pager number correctly.
One system that affords some automatic communication capability is call forwarding, in which calls to a base phone are automatically transferred directly to the remote phone. The problem with call forwarding, however, is that non-emergency phone calls are directly forwarded to the remote phone as well as emergency calls. Thus there is no discretion on the part of the owner to decline or accept a particular call. In addition, the base phone becomes tied up during a call forwarded communication, thereby preventing other callers from leaving messages.
Thus there is a need to overcome the conventional problems and time delays facing an emergency caller attempting to contact a telephone owner who is away from his or her base phone. There is a need for a system which gives the calling party, via a simple command on the telephone keypad, an option to have calling information directly relayed, from the called party's base phone to his remote pager or phone, without requiring the calling party to acquire, store and/or dial another phone number.
There is also a need to immediately verify to the calling party that the calling information being relayed is correct. The present invention provides such a system.